DISPOSICIÓN N.º 1381/DGIUR/

5.2.2.1 “They expect too much from us”

Generally, Kai takes up a critical position in relation to the education system in Malawi, in general, and the university set up, in particular. It seems that Kai uses the interview space to position himself as a critic of the “system”. For instance, in explaining the differences in the writing practices between the MCHS and the Polytechnic as pointed out earlier, Kai feels that this difference is down to the point that “there is no collaboration in tertiary education in Malawi”. He is of the view that the:

Basis is not the same here it’s like I am starting from the ground again but there (at the MCHS) I was able to write and convince and pass exams while here I feel like I’m learning from step one again which I feel like also sometimes is a hill to climb.

Here, it could be said that Kai alludes to the transition as something that has “de- skilled” (Gourlay, 2009) him in stripping off the competencies he had in one context

and demanding that he “learns from step one again” to be a competent writer in another context. While such views and or experiences are not uncommon (cf., Lea, 1994; Lea and Street, 1998) in making this erroneous assessment which assumes that a one-size- fits-all approach is viable to prepare all students to meaningfully function across different disciplinary orientations in Malawi, Kai draws from “master narratives” which pervade the Malawian higher education setting; narratives which are built on deficit views of literacy (see Chapter 2). While this is the case, he, on the other hand, continues to use the interview discourse to performatively construct himself as critical of the institutions of higher learning in Malawi. In further explicating the nature of academic writing he re-enacts this critical stance as he is of the view that regarding writing, “lecturers expect too much from students”. This point not only positions the lecturers as unaware of what is going on elsewhere in the education system of the country, as I will illustrate below, but also indexes the disconnect in terms of expectations which is there between the lecturers and the students they teach.

5.2.2.2 Crossing without a bridge

Following his understanding that lecturers expect a lot from students, I asked Kai to explain how “lecturers expect students to do something they do not know”. To this, he responded by saying that:

I feel like I think the lecturers take it for granted that when students come from secondary school … he knows how to handle academic writing and when he joins the university before maybe they have been told how to … present the way the lecturers are expecting you to do they are maybe asked to do something. Such understanding indexes that the “gaps between tutor and students’ understanding and expectations” surrounding academic writing tasks which has been noted elsewhere (cf., Lea, 2005) could also be a significant concern in Malawi. This is so as Kai is not the only respondent I interacted with who raised this issue. While I will return to this issue later, Kai further sheds more light on this by noting that:

They (lecturers) take it for granted to say if somebody has gone through a secondary school education … is supposed to be in this level while it’s not the same outside there and these lecturers are confined in the university but they don’t have that time to go into the secondary schools and know the future students … what they’ve learnt how they’re writing.

Interesting to note is the point that in claiming that the lecturers take their students’ entry level writing competencies “for granted” due to their being “confined” to the university a move which makes them “unaware” of what these prospective students are learning “outside there”, Kai positions himself as not just critical of the institution but

also positions the lecturers as unaware of the realities facing the students they handle in their classes. He positions the lecturers as people who have lost touch with the realities of an education system they are part of. It is not surprising that he therefore wraps up this point by stating that he finds this difference “puzzling” choosing to sum up the whole point by saying that:

It’s like a bridge which one has to jump (sic) but … somebody has to build that bridge but when it comes to like this writing this academic writing feels like the lecturers expect you to write according to what they expect you to do while you sometimes you don’t know what they really want so it’s like a river in between and there’s no bridge for you to cross.

This bridge metaphor sums up the disconnect which is there between what novice writers bring along with them and how their lecturers treat this in their evaluation of the autobiographical selves which they bring. If this is anything to go by, then it could perhaps be true that in bringing the wider context to bear on the writing process and explicating writing from such a social purview, we are bound to understand something of the “context of culture” (Fairclough, 1992) which impacts writing development in any local context (see Lillis, 2001). This could be true of the Malawian context as well. Further worth pointing out is the point that such observations, which might lead to the indictment of an entire system, do indeed suggest that the issue with novices like Kai might not be intelligence or lack thereof but rather having to engage with a system whose modes of engagement remain largely unknown (see Ballard and Clanchy, 1988). This continues to confine novice writers like Kai to the margins of the community as academic literacy practices continue to be nothing but an “institutional practice of mystery” (Lillis, 2001, 2013) to them.

In a nutshell, it can be surmised that Kai enters the university having brought along identities as a dentist and a police officer. With previous encounters with “ways of thinking and using language which exist in the academy” (Hyland, 2009), he positions himself as somebody already aware of the “contact zone” which the academy is as well as somebody already aware of the disciplinary politics he will have to write himself into. He therefore used the interview set up to performatively construct himself as a critic of the institution as he, in an attempt to explain the “gap” in expectation between lecturers and students, positions lecturers at the institution as having lost touch with reality. How then do all these impact his becoming an academic writer as well as his view of this becoming?